PC Game Review: Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash. Yeah, it’s yet another critically acclaimed indie game available on Steam for fifteen clams. But guess what? It’s not a puzzle game. In fact, it’s not even by PopCap. Well, of course it’s artsy. But if World of Goo is Tim Burton and Tetris, and Braid is Miyamoto and Chrono Trigger, then Zeno Clash is Timothy Leary and Street Fighter. It’s Van Damme tripping his balls off. It’s Segal huffing gasoline on Quaaludes and ‘shrooms. It’s The Rock jerking off on a kaleidoscope. Okay, maybe it’s not that or even the one before it but it is a first person perspective fighting game with surreal landscapes, bizarre characters and wacky weapons like fish guns and squirrel bombs.

Most of the time you will be ass kicking with fist and foot though, only occasionally will you need to pick up a weapon, usually to help even the odds when fighting a vast number of foes, some who have weapons themselves, or to defeat particularly large enemies. The controls are typical FPS controls, with a few extra keys needed to facilitate blocking and enemy lock-on. There are no fireballs or dragon-punches though; no half circle forward, quarter circle back multi-button desperation moves. King of Fighters this isn’t. Not to say there is no challenge to be had for fans of that hallowed series. The many enemies and decent set of moves, including jabs, kicks, uppercuts, power punches, ripostes, blocks, face smashes and throws you employ against a wide variety of brawlers who use different tactics help keep the interest, and adrenaline level, high. Also keeping the interest up is the game’s setting and plot, far more exotic and detailed than anything they could fit into a traditional fighting game, making this a half-adventure, half-fighting game.

You are Ghat, and all you know is that you returned home from spending time in the world outside with a bunch of alien lunatics called the Corwid and when you returned, you killed your hermaphroditic parent, Father-Mother. Now all your siblings want you dead. You look fairly human, but your brothers and sisters all look like the characters of sesame street got together and had an orgy with no protection resulting in some of the weirdest lookin’ people ever to grace a game screen. They aren’t the only oddballs though, it seems everyone in the strange world of Zeno Clash took a mean shot from the ugly stick. Even your girlfriend, Deadra, who accompanies you on your journey, has horns and a huge ‘fro. With her you travel the world of Zenozoik, unraveling the tale of your past, meeting bizarre looking, and thinking, creatures, and kicking the living shit out of 90% of them. Not only are the denizens of Zenozoic unusual though, so is the landscape.

-Snuffleupogus sans Rogaine.

Particularly the architecture is very odd. Buildings made from clay like stone, molded in bizarre shapes, bone tied around masts and pillars, spiraling shapes; everything is so unconventional. Tree branches look scribbled, the plants range from familiar to outre’.

All this helps to lend a feeling of strangeness and wonder to exploring the world, and blended with shit- stomping ass-kicking fisticuffs, as well as a great, if a tad too preachy and pretentious, storyline, for a good game this does make. Although it isn’t for everyone. It was a foolish move, the Chilean developers made, not to release a demo for a game this odd. I suspect their sales have taken some hit from piracy. They have said they are working on it, though. Maybe they should have laid off the psychedelics for the marketing meetings.

SCORE: 7.5 Good and a Half